Technical Ideas on Lubricants

Contamination: Contamination control plays a vital role in the overall reliability and life of any lubricated component. Control of contamination begins with lubricant supplier contracts and continues with storage and handling to the point at which the lubricants are removed from service

Lubrication practices: The way we lubricate and re-lubricate our equipment can affect their overall reliability. It is critical that we confirm the right lubricant is applied at the right time to the right component in the right quantity.

Storage and handling: Your lubricant storage area is the nerve center for lubrication. Poor practices here will resonate through all other areas of lubrication. Strategic improvements in the way you store and handle lubricants will provide a solid foundation for improvements in all other areas

Training and certification: Lubrication is a skill-based occupation which requires significant training. Lubrication technicians today should be well-educated, skilled employees that hold the responsibility of ensuring our critical assets are lubricated with precision. Therefore, training is essential and certification is required to support the skill of the technicians.

Continuous improvement: There is always room for improvement, especially in lubrication. Focusing on areas of poor performance, it is important to keep improving on the progress already made.

Identify your problems areas: Understanding the areas in lubrication that you have problems with is very easy. One look into your lube room or a survey of what training and certification has been completed by the lubrication team will usually provide the answer(s) you’re looking for. Some areas, however, will require a little more investigation to uncover real problems. For example, under-lubricated bearings do not appear to have problems on the surface, but a review of bearing repairs and replacements may uncover that the life cycle of specific bearings is unusually low and the cause is a lack of proper lubrication.

Implement best practices: At this point, you would know what is best practice with regard to lubrication in your plant. Based on the survey results, you now know which areas of lubrication require the most attention or focus. Using the results of your internal survey, you can begin to make changes to the most critical areas on which you scored poorly.

Continuously improve: Once implementation of best practices has begun, it is important to keep the momentum moving along. One of the best ways to do this is to re-benchmark via a re-survey at predefined intervals. Administering the survey will provide valuable feedback on which areas are improving and which are still falling short of best practice.